In 2020, the FDA met with Western Growers Association and offered support, through the form of a letter, for widespread participation from industry in the Western Growers Association data sharing/analytics program. 

Western Growers partnered with Crème Global to develop a food safety data sharing tool, GreenLink. The tool can capture food safety data generated during pre-season, pre-harvest, and post-harvest activities. It currently focuses on pre-harvest data and other metadata.

Western Growers completed the project phase with five pilot participants. The first version of the tool was released late in 2021. Currently, Western Growers is focused on recruitment of additional industry members and expanding marketing and communication efforts.

While discrete data sharing currently is between industry participants, Western Growers has asked FDA and other stakeholders for input on what type of aggregated data would be useful to share with regulatory agencies.

A session entitled “Driving a Cultural Change in Produce Safety Through the Use of a Novel Confidential Data Sharing Platform” focused on this work at the International Association for Food Protection Annual Meeting on Aug. 2, 2022.